Margo Krager's 19th Century Fabrics Lecture

Today I went to Zoe's Trunk Quilt Shop for a very special Valentine's Day treat! Margo Krager who is one of the top authorities on vintage textiles in the country was a guest lecturer! She designs reproduction fabrics and has researched textiles for more than fifteen years. This is the first lecture of this type I have ever attended and it was really interesting. Many ladies showed up and it was a success all around! Margo is a wealth of knowledge and you can tap into too because she has a blog!
http://cottonopia.blogspot.com/ I am looking forward to reading more of it and I hope she doesn't mind that I borrowed a few of her pictures that have to do with the lecture I heard today. They are on her blog with more explanation and I really encourage you to go over to it and see it in its entirety if this interests you at all.
Margo told us all about her second time through college and love of history especially as it relates to textiles. She was very enthusiastic and loves the hunt of information and research (as I do!) and I could have listened to her all day despite the not so comfortable chairs! She told us of her amazing thirty year birthday present of a book she calls the Dargate book (it was traced back to an aution at the Dargate Auction House) and the subsequent career she has had reproducing some of the fabric in the book. The book has TONS of little swatches as you can see from Margo Krager's c. 1830 Dargate book with early double pinks. This is just two pages of this huge book and we actually got to see the original book and were treated to a look at each and every page! Margo says the book contains approximately 1750 fabric swatches of circa 1830 dressgoods. The colors and detail are amazing, absolutely unbelievable.

Now that I know the process that Margo goes through in order to recreate these fabrics I plan to buy some of them. She showed us a powerpoint and actual swatches of the original and the reproduction as well as sketches and everything. She works with people all the way to Korea to get these made and I want to support her efforts and enjoy the beautiful fabric.
She also told us her next line of fabric will be another line of reproduction fabrics called Little Pink Stars. It will be made with a new company--Blue Hill Fabrics. She told us the inspiration for the line is a quilt made byher friend Bette Faries. Bette has been collecting antique fabric and has been recycling it into an entirely hand pieced and hand quilted huge quilt. The stars are mostly pink with a few other browns, indigos, and tans and are very small. The background fabric is not antique but all the stars are antique fabrics circa 1840 to the end of the century. This picture doesn't even BEGIN to do this quilt justice.

Here is a close up (again from Margo's blog) I am not sure the measurements of these stars but they are around the size of the palm of my hand I would say. I will be buying this fabric, this pattern, anything related! I am sold. ReproductionFabrics.com is Margo's online store if you get the bug as I have...

And just to make the day sweeter I was pleasantly suprised that we got two handouts and a fabulous "Paisley Royale Strippy Quilt" pattern as well as fabric gifts from Margo and from Mary who owns the store. The other nice thing was that I knew at least ten of the gals that were there from one quilt thing or another and I made friends with a few more....and if you are interested in the pattern I also found it online at http://www.baumtextile.com/projects/pdf/paisley_royale_strippy_quilt.pdf Happy Valentine's Day!